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Jamie Ashen and his wife Lisa receive a mysterious ventriloquist doll, "Billy", in an unmarked package. Wondering who sent the doll, Lisa recalls a poem about a woman named Mary Shaw. Jamie disregards this and leaves to get dinner. Lisa plays around with Billy and poses in the mirror. Then all the sounds disappear and Billy comes to life, attacking Lisa. Later Jamie finds Lisa dead with her tongue ripped out, and Billy lying near her body. Jamie discovers that Billy belonged to Mary Shaw, a ventriloquist from his hometown of Ravens Fair.

Returning to Ravens Fair, Jamie confronts his wealthy father, Edward, about Mary Shaw. Edward is wheelchair-bound with a new wife, Ella, who takes care of him. Edward and Ella remind Jamie of the poem, "Beware the stare of Mary Shaw. She had no children, only dolls. If you see her in your dreams, make sure you never ever scream, or she'll cut your tongue out at the seam", regarding Shaw and her penchant for cutting out her victims' tongues. Before leaving, Jamie warns Ella that Edward is a monster. After Lisa's funeral, Jamie wanders into a cemetery and finds Shaw's grave and those of her puppets. Marion, the mortician's senile wife, warns him of the danger of Shaw's puppets, and he realizes he should rebury Billy. He does so, but Detective Jim Lipton digs it back up, unconvinced of Jamie's innocence in Lisa's death and believing that he's trying to conceal evidence. Jamie tells him about the poem, but Lipton is skeptical. The next morning, Jamie brings Billy to the mortician, Henry, who finally tells him about Mary Shaw.

Shaw was a famous ventriloquist whose ambition was to make the perfect puppet. At one performance, a young boy named Michael heckled her, saying that he saw her lips moving when performing with Billy and went missing shortly after. Shaw was blamed for the disappearance, and the villagers killed her. Her final wish was to turn her body into a ventriloquist's puppet and to be buried with her 101 puppets. A young Henry wandered into his fathers mortuary and accidentally knocked the coffin over. Shaw's body briefly came to life and approached Henry, but he survived by covering his mouth to keep from screaming; Shaw can only kill her victims when they scream.

At the theater, Jamie finds Shaw's dressing room and discovers an old book with plans to make the perfect puppet. Jamie confronts Edward and learns that Michael was his great-uncle—with help from the other villagers, Michael's family murdered Shaw by forcing her to scream and then cutting out her tongue. The men involved were killed off one by one, found with their tongues ripped out. Their wives, children, and children's children all suffered the same fate; Edward deliberately drove Jamie away to spare him, but Shaw will now come back for them. Lipton tells Jamie that Shaw's puppets are all missing from their graves. Jamie receives a phone call from Henry, telling him to go to the theater. In truth Henry has been murdered by Mary Shaw when searching for his wife after yelling at her for talking to Billy; when she takes her victims' tongues, she acquires their voices.

Jamie and Lipton go to the theater and Shaw's living quarters. In a hidden back room, they find the body of Michael Ashen, kidnapped and murdered by Mary Shaw, strung up like a marionette, and 100 of Shaw's puppets. Unable to have children, Shaw treated Michael as her "son" by turning his corpse into a puppet. A clown doll, possessed by Shaw, tells them she wants to silence those who silenced her, and that she killed Lisa because she was pregnant with the last of Jamie's family line. Lipton shoots the doll, but Shaw begins materializing through the other dolls. Realizing they must destroy all the dolls, they set the room on fire and try to flee the theater. Shaw's ghost chases them, and kills Lipton after he screams when he slips from the catwalk as it collapses. Jamie escapes as the theater burns down, destroying the dolls.

Billy is the only remaining puppet, and the only way to get rid of Shaw is to destroy him. After Marion tells Jamie that Edward took the doll, he returns to his father's house to destroy Billy. When he arrives, Shaw reappears, but is forced to retreat when Jamie throws Billy into the fireplace. Jamie finds Edward in his wheelchair, but is horrified to discover his father is dead, his entire back hollowed out and replaced with a wooden shaft used in ventriloquist dummies. Jamie realizes Edward has been wearing the same suit, and that Ella has been at his side the entire time with her hand behind his back. Ella, Mary Shaw's "perfect doll", appears. Jamie screams, and Shaw kills him. The films ends with Jamie saying the poem and the audience being shown pictures of the human puppets including Lisa, Henry, Edward, Lipton, Ella and Jamie, then Mary closing the book.

In an alternate ending, Ella had been abused by Edward until she suffered a miscarriage; seeking revenge, she dug up one of Mary Shaw's puppets and was possessed by her spirit, becoming the perfect puppet that Shaw strove to make. After killing Edward, she hollowed out his corpse and used it as a puppet to lure Jamie back to Ravens Fair. Ella sits a tied-up Jamie alongside Edward and Lisa in a macabre family portrait. Jamie screams as Mary Shaw attacks him, presumably taking his tongue. The film ends with Ella reciting the poem to Jamie's corpse, tucked into bed like a child. Before blowing out the candle, Ella tells Jamie that if he sees Mary Shaw, the only thing that will protect him is silence.

In the United States, as of April 16, 2007, the film's total gross has been worth US$16.5 million (according to Box Office Mojo), and screenings of Dead Silence were ceased in most theaters sixteen days following its release; the film's estimated production budget was US$20 million. As of April 1, 2009, US$5,408,331 has been generated globally.[6] Tentative plans for a sequel were abandoned.[citation needed]

The film received generally negative reviews; Rotten Tomatoes rated the film with a 21% "Rotten" based on 76 reviews with a consensus of "More tasteful than recent slasher flicks, but Dead Silence is undone by boring characters, bland dialogue, and an unnecessary and obvious twist ending."[7]

Lakeshore Records released the soundtrack of Dead Silence on March 20, 2007. The CD contains 31 tracks, the first track being the song "We Sleep Forever" performed by American rock band Aiden (despite not actually being featured within the film itself). The rest of the CD is taken up by Charlie Clouser's film's score. Clouser has worked on many film scores such as the Saw series and Resident Evil: Extinction.

Many alternate scenes were released on the unrated DVD and HD DVD and are listed below:

Detective Lipton has a conversation with his colleague before interrogating Jamie on Lisa's death.

Mary Shaw's performance at the theater is extended.

Jamie walking through Mary Shaw's property is slightly extended.

The unrated version depicts Detective Lipton rowing the boat towards the dilapidated theater to chase Jamie.

Mary Shaw is depicted several times throughout the unrated version with a long, slimy tongue, made of numerous tongues from her victims. In the scenes, she uses her tongue to frighten her victims, making it slither from her mouth (and licks Jamie's cheek in one scene). Along with the tongues of her victims, Mary acquires their voice as well.

Jamie attempting to swim out of the theater is slightly extended.

In an alternate ending, Ella simply knocks Jamie out after he discovers his father was a puppet all along. Then, she explains that the original Ella was a human being with Edward as an abusive husband. Edward knocked her down the stairs, and killed their unborn child. Ella dug up the grave where the puppet Billy was buried, and became possessed by Mary Shaw. Afterward, Ella makes a family photograph, and then, dressed as Mary Shaw, tells a bedtime story to a child by candlelight, later revealed to be Jamie with his tongue ripped out (or would have been had they added the visual effect planned). This story is the poem. Ella also reveals that only silence can save you from Mary Shaw. Then she blows out the candle, ending the movie.

In his personal blog, screenwriter Whannell reveals the origins of the film within the context of the "Hollywood" film industry. In a candid post entitled, "Dud Silence: The Hellish Experience Of Making A Bad Horror Film", Whannell explains that the film was conceived following the advice of his agent at the time and that a "script doctor" was eventually employed by the production studio. Whannell concludes the post with a description of the key lessons that were learned following the Dead Silence experience:

After everything is said and done, I’m almost glad ‘Dead Silence’ happened, because it gave me an extreme, coal-face lesson in what not to do. It was like learning to swim by leaping off Niagara Falls. I only write scripts on spec now, which means that I write them in my own time without getting paid and then take them out into the world to see if anyone’s interested. Never again will I enter the arranged marriage of selling a pitch. I have also become very gun-shy about working with studios. In the world of independent film, what you write ends up on screen. Plus, they don’t have the money to bring in script doctors! Works fine for me. Who knows, maybe one day I will work with a studio again...[9]